Like You
by Zombiifissh
Summary: Wherein Hiei angsts a lot about death and mating. Sad songfic about Kuama and Hiei. Really pretty, but tragic. ANGST! oneshot.


**A/N: **

'_blah' _**–lyrics**

**blah –note **

**Hey all of you. This is a songfic… the song's "Like You" by Evanescence. It's a sad fic for a sad song. Hope all you morbid people enjoy this in the sick way I did:/**

Hiei watched and waited as Yusuke and Kuwabara approached him. Yukina was also there, to Hiei's surprise, but Kurama was not. Kurama had gone a week ago, telling only Hiei where he was going. He had instructed Hiei not to follow him; it was a personal matter he was to attend o, and not one he wanted his beloved mate to get involved with. Hiei had agreed to stay behind, not knowing the impossible danger Kurama was going to face.

For seven days Hiei had waited for Kurama to return, never doubting he would. Two days ago, however, he had feel a piercing chill run through his limbs, rapidly working its way inward and seizing his heart in clawing terror, if only for a second.

That was when he really started to worry.

'_Stay low_

_Soft, dark and dreamless_

_Far beneath my nightmares_

_And loneliness,'_

is what he told himself those long hours, still seated in the palm of worry. His heart pounded viciously now, desperately hoping his worst fears had not come to pass. The sorrowful, apprehensive expressions on the others' faces were not helping.

Hiei had informed the rest of the group of Kurama's absence when they questioned, but never told them the details of Kurama's journey. To be truthful, Kurama had not told Hiei what he was leaving to do, so Hiei was as clueless as a worm being stalked by a bird.

The three now standing before him knew of Hiei and Kurama's relationship. Hiei looked at Yusuke, awaiting the news, clinging to a glimmer of hope.

"Hiei," Yusuke started, sadness permeating his voice. He paused to gather himself and his words. "You need to… There's something you need to see." Hiei let himself be led from the home that he had shared with Kurama; with Yusuke on his left, Yukina to his right, and Kuwabara behind, Hiei supposed they must look like a funeral procession. This was also not helping his nerves relax.

They walked slowly in the direction of Yusuke's house. When they arrived, instead of going inside, Yusuke walked around to the back of the house and entered through the back door instead of the front. He quietly led the other three through a door to his basement. It was empty—for the most part.

In the middle of the cool cement floor lay a long, wooden crate. Kuwabara and Yukina stopped moving at the bottom of the stairs, while Yusuke walked with Hiei halfway to the crate, then ushered him forward gently. Step by step, Hiei's fear grew until it rose in him like a mountain on the horizon. The crate was closed and there was a note on top. He decided to postpone reading it and tucked it in his pocked as he slowly moved his shaking hands to open the lid of the box. The lid slid off and clattered loudly to the floor, but to Hiei's ears, it might as well have been made of cotton.

A chilling sensation ran from his head to his toes in an instant as hi saw the inside of the crate.

'_I hate me_

_For breathing without you'_

Kurama lay in the crate, and effectively disguised coffin, drained of blood and naked. He would have looked like a marble statue if not for his crimson hair lying around his head like a pool of fresh blood. On his chest over his heart, someone had crudely carved Hiei's name. Icicles stabbed Hiei's frozen, crying heart.

'_I don't want to feel_

_Anymore for you'_

Disbelief flooded Hiei. Kurama dead? He didn't even look wounded aside from Hiei's name, and that was only as big as his hand. He heard the others quietly leave as he fell to his knees beside the coffin. Kurama looked just as he had while sleeping exept for the fact that he was as white as snow and felt just as cold to Hiei's touch. Hiei rested his head on the edge of the coffin and laid there until he fell asleep.

--- 3--- 

The day of the funeral had arrived. Time had passed in a slow, painful blur for Hiei. For the two weeks after Hiei had seen Kurama the last time, Hiei had been living with Yusuke. Hiei didn't object—he hadn't said a word since that day; he just continued to exist, looking empty as the night sky and less alive than Kurama. Yusuke was disturbed by Hiei's reaction. He'd never thought the little Koorime would be this devastated, despite Yukina's explanations and her warnings and lectures about the mating habits of demons. Yusuke knew now that when a demon's mate dies, the surviving one will lose the will to live, and Kurama seemed to be Hiei's only reason to live aside from Yukina even when he seemed to be content with everything around him.

Yusuke walked to his room, where Hiei had been sleeping for the two weeks, and cautiously walked in. Hiei was sitting in the corner with his chin resting on his knees and his arms wrapped around his shins, staring out the window at the dismal sky outside.

"Hiei? It's time to go," Yusuke said quietly. Without looking, Hiei nodded and stood. He walked numbly out past Yusuke and waited for him at the front door. There was a few minute's wait as Yusuke changed into funeral-appropriate clothing. He walked out to meet Hiei and nodded. Hiei stepped aside to let Yusuke open the door. Hiei walked through after Yusuke and trailed after him, looking like a reluctant puppy as he walked.

At the gate to the cemetery, Hiei stopped Yusuke. He looked up at Yusuke and shook his head. Yusuke nodded.

"I get it," he said, watching Hiei jump into one of the trees to watch the funeral from afar. He left the path to walk through the graves to get to the procession.

It was held outdoors in front of a square, stone building about the size of a shed. After everyone had said their nostalgic words and paid their respects, a symmetrical team of large-built men moved to hoist up Kurama's coffin and bring it to the stone shed. The graveskeeper opened the stone doorway, revealing a set of stairs leading into the ground. Hiei watched on as they carried Kurama down into the earth.

'_Grieving for you_

_I'm not grieving for you'_

He clutched his chest as a wave of agony washed over him. He hugged his knees to himself, safe from falling to the ground by the branches of the tree. It reminded him of Kurama. He wished that Kurama was with him, and realized after two-and-a-half weeds of deathlike numbness just how much he was going to miss Kurama. It was like he was being ripped apart from the inside.

'_Nothing real love can't undo_

_And though I may have lost my way_

_All paths lead straight to you'_

Hiei stayed there until everyone had left, then slowly ventured to the entrance to the tomb. He touched the door, wanting to see the inside of the stone walls, then retracted his hand. There was a moment of indecision, then he slid open the doors grating ly and descended.

Surprisingly, even though it was twilight and the sunlight was fading, there was plenty of light to see by. The steps were at a gentle slope, then they stopped. Torches lit the walls of a long hallway before the walls opened up and a room formed. It was much cooler in the larger room, though there were still torches. The walls in the room had been ornately carved with roses, but the stonework was dull and chipped. The floor was cold; Hiei could feel it through his shoes.

In the middle of the room stood a large, low stone pedestal with a granite casket on top. Hiei walked slowly to it and touched the cold stone of the casket's edge. He looked down and saw Kurama lying there, gracefully entangled in silk sheets, through a plate of clear glass. He reached out to touch Kurama, but was stopped by the invisible glass plate.

'_I long to be like you_

_Lie cold in the ground like you,'_

he thought. He went back to the entrance of the tomb, shutting the stone door as quietly as he could.

When he got back to Yusuke's house, he found Yusuke and Kuwabara waiting for him at the table. He slid his shoes off at the door and tried to walk past them, but they surrounded him. Yukina walked out from the next room, looking worried.

"Hiei, you were gone for a really long time," she said, concerned. Hiei was silent. He didn't trust himself to speak through the sticking lump in his throat. "You haven't been doing anything you shouldn't have, have you?" she asked carefully. Yusuke put a hand on Hiei's shoulder after more silence, but Hiei repelled him with a short burst of his aura. He walked past Kuwabara by pushing him away with his aura as well. He wint into Yusuke's room and locked the door. Yukina shook her head. "It's just as I feared," she said quietly, sitting down at the kitchen table.

"What do you mean?" Yusuke asked, sitting down as well with Kuwabara beside him.

"I mean to say that his aura's gotten substantially weaker since…" she trailed off, not needing to finish her sentence. Kuwabara nodded.

"I felt it too. When he pushed me, he pushed hard enough that he should have thrown me through the house, but what I felt was different. It felt starved… and withered… Kind of like he didn't care."

"But he's dying inside," Yukina finished. "He's going to die.. unless we can do something."

"Like what?" Yusuke asked. "What could possibly help him now?" Yukina thought for a moment.

"Well, if we got something that belonged to Kurama that was infused with Kurama's spirit energy and gave it to Hiei, maybe that would work? Until something happens to change Hiei's slump, his aura will keep being drained from him until he dies."

"Okay, but what could we use?" Yukina shook her head.

--- 3--- 

Hiei sat in the corner by the window that he had started the day by. He stared off into the night sky. Moonbeams fell on the floor in front of him, shining down from the full moon. He yearned for something, _anything_ to take his mind away from the terrible, clawing pain in his chest.

'_Halo_

_Blinding wall between us_

_Melt away and leave us alone again'_

He remembered the note that was laying on Kurama's first coffin. He pulled it out of his pocket slowly, careful not to tear it. It looked a bit worse for wear after two weeks, but it was still readable. He smoothed it out on a patch of moonlit floor and began to read.

**To Hiei,**

**If you are reading this, you should be proud. It means that your mate has chosen you over all else. I suppose he's never told you about me, and that's fine, you don't need to know who I am. I will tell you, however, about my relationship with him any why he is now dead.**

**I was once his partner on a job. He intrigued me, and we became friends. We traveled together for a long time, and I almost made him my mate, but he let me down and left me. I never saw Yoko again after that. Then one day, a human came to me, and I almost ate him, but I recognized his familiar youki. He knew that before he could truly be with the one he loved, he would have to utterly refuse the ones that had almost been his mate, which meant we would have to meet eventually. **

**I won't go into the details, but our duel was long and bloody. Of course, I lost, which may seem confusing since Yoko Kurama is now dead. Believe me, I experience no joy from writing these words.**

**When he won, he looked down at me and opened his shirt. The etiquette of the duel stated what was to happen next. I will send you the rose that he used to carve your name into his chest separately. Unfortunately, when he did that, he had already lost so much blood that he bled out from that one wound. I watched in horror as all of his other injuries, great and small, healed themselves while your name bled down his front, and he died. **

**He told me to tell you… that he always did love you, Hiei.**

The note ended there; Hiei pushed it away with trembling hands. If anything, the note had made him feel worse. Kurama had bled out of _his name._ To Hiei, it felt like he'd killed Kurama himself.

'_Humming, haunted somewhere out there_

_I believe our love can_

_See us through in death'_

--- 3--- 

Hiei woke up the next morning wishing he hadn't. He never wanted to see again; everything in the world reminded him of Kurama.

'_I long to be like you _

_Lie cold in the ground like you'_

He picked his head up off the sunny patch of floor. He noticed the floor made a crinkling sound under him and he saw that he had been using the note as a pillow. He cringed and viciously crumpled the note in his hands.

Yusuke walked to the front door to answer the knock there. There was no one there, but a small, black, velvety box a little longer than Yusuke's hand lay on the doorstep. He picked it up and opened it, gasping a little when he saw what was inside. He ran inside and called Kuwabara on the telephone, telling him to get Yukina and meet him at the park.

"Look at this," Yusuke said excitedly before the other two had a chance to speak. He opened the box, revealing a red rose with blood staining the end of it. The others stared. "It's _Kurama's_ rose," he said with urgency. "He always had it with him! We can use this to save Hiei!" Kuwabara's mouth was slightly open and his eyes were a little wider than normal. He reached for the rose, but Yusuke snapped the box shut. "You idiot! Don't touch it, you'll contaminate Kurama's aura! I can still feel it coming from the rose," he snapped. Yukina nodded her agreement.

"Now that we've got out item, we have to figure out how we give it to him," said Yukina.

"How about we have you give it to him?" Kuwabara suggested. "That twerp wouldn't take it from either of us," he said to Yukina. She nodded and took the box reverently.

"When do we give it to him?" Yusuke asked, but Yukina had already stared for Yusuke's house, Kuwabara quick to follow her.

Yukina knocked delicately at the door that concealed Hiei. "Hiei," she called softly, "Hiei, are you there? We've brought you something good. Open the door, please?" There was a silence, then a small click as Hiei unlocked the door. Yukina paused for a moment, then opened the door and stepped into the room. Hiei looked up at her from beside the window, looking gaunt and dead on his feet. He glanced down at the black velvet box as the other two filed in after her. She presented the box to him and he took it, opening it slowly.

His eyes widened as he saw the rose. Feeling Kurama's aura slightly, he looked around until he realized it was coming from the rose itself. Slight hope shattered once again, he took the rose with trembling hands as the others watched on in hope. Through his fingers, Hiei could feel Kurama's aura, but it wasn't whole. He felt slightly disgusted at it, like it was some perversity come to impersonate Kurama, shaming the dead. Even so, he felt anguish and agony over Kurama's ghostly leftover aura, and knowing he would never be able to feel it fully again, never be able to experience being enveloped in Kurama's aura again.

The other three wondered whether it worked—Hiei's face became unreadable throughout all of this. Hiei held the rose to his chest and took a step backwards, looking down at the rose. He examined it more closely, then his visage became a veil of horror as he noticed the blood staining the stem end of the rose. The others started forward, noticing his sudden change of expression, but he evaded them and ran out the door.

He was outside and running for the graveyard before the others were outside Yusuke's room. He let silent tears run down his face as he ran, still clutching the rose to himself. He could hear the steady clink of his tear gems clattering to the ground behind him, so he decided to get off the roads and took a detour. He kept running until he met the forest. He stared at it, wondering if he could get lost in there, almost hoping he would. He ran through, branches and brambles cutting him and his clothes to pieces while he continued to cry. He burst through the other side of the small wood at the back end of the cemetery, close to Kurama's tomb.

'_There's room inside for two_

_And I'm not grieving for you_

_I'm coming for you'_

Yusuke was the first to reach the outside door after Hiei. He looked around quickly for him, then turned back to face Kuwabara and Yukina. He shook his head.

"I don't see him," Yusuke told the others.

"That's all right, we can follow him," Yukina said sadly.

"How are we gonna do that? His aura's too weak for even me to track," Kuwabara said. Yukina pointed at the ground.

"That's how," she said, indicating the trail of dark red tear gems on the ground. They glittered and shone in the morning sun. "Come! We have to hurry!" Yukina ran along the trail left by Hiei, the other two close behind.

"Are those what I think they are?" Kuwabara asked. He already knew of tear gems, he had seen them in Yukina's memories before. Yukina nodded as she ran and explained to Yusuke about the solidified tears.

"The more beautiful they are, the more sorrow has been poured into them," she said, panting. "And to judge by these…"

"Hiei…" Yusuke muttered, knowing where Yukina's statement was going. 'To cry at all, Hiei must be hurting really badly,' Yusuke thought. 'Not to mention the quality of these gems…'

--- 3--- 

Hiei shouldered the stone doors open with all the grace of a wounded animal. He staggered down the steps to Kurama's granite casket and laid his hands on the glass above Kurama's chest.

'_You're not alone_

_No matter what they told you_

_You're not alone,'_

He pried his fingers under the top of the glass and wrenched it away from the casket, shattering it against the floor and listening to it break into a million pieces.

'_I'll be right beside you forever more,'_

Tears still streamed down his face as he moved to the other side of the casket. He wiped them away impatiently and moved into the casket beside Kurama; carefulnot to disturb his body.

'_I long to be like you_

_Lie cold in the ground like you_

_There's room inside for two_

_And I'm not grieving for you'_

Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Yukina reached the edge of the woods. Looing down, they saw that there was a larger concentration of gems here, indicating Hiei must have stopped here, at least for a little bit. Kuwabara quickly picked up the gems—he had been collecting them along the way—and they were off again, through the forest, calling out Hiei's name, this time finding blood among the branches over the tear gems.

--- 3--- 

Hiei's dying aura had become very flexible in its death, an odd characteristic of demon auras. Lying beside Kurama in his grave, not knowing what he was doing, Hiei poured the last of his aura into the rose. The new flexibility his aura had aquired allowed him to work in harmony with the remains of Kurama's aura inside the rose. Before his eyes, bending to his subconscious will, the thorns on the rose grew black and extended longer and longer until they were sprouting thorns of their own. The original thorns could now be called vines, and were now spreading across the interior of the tomb, like some nightmarish monster in a child's tale, forming itself to trace the stonework on the walls. The newer vines came around, twisted towards Hiei and stripped him of his clothes, arranging him in prefect symmetry with Kurama, twirled him in the silk sheet beside his head lover, and laid him down just beside him.

'_And as we lay in silent bliss_

_I know you remember me'_

The red roes had left Hiei's hand; it now rested between Kurama and Hiei's hearts, like a monument of their love in the middle of a hurricane made of black vines and dagger-sharp thorns. The vines encroached up the steps, coating the walls in thorns, but avoiding the flames that still burned low in their torches. The vines creeped out of the stone doors as if they had a will of their own, and covered the doors, making the opening look like the diseased throat of some great beast that had fallen and died there.

Inside the tomb, one thorn still moved. It slowly extended from the rose and cut Kurama's name into Hiei, just over his heart. Instead of bleeding out onto the white silk sheets, however, the plant soaked up and absorbed Hiei's blood, dying the vines closest to the casket red.

--- 3--- 

Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Yukina ran to the tomb, halting in abhorrence when they saw the ominous, thick, veinlike vines spreading out from the mouth of the tomb. They ventured down slowly, careful not to touch the thorn-covered, dark walls. The sun had not risen enough to let enough to fill the underground hall with light yet.

The three emerged into the chamber where the casket was held, squinting and straining their eyes in an attempt to see. The sun rose to the point where it could flood the underground burial chamber itself with light. The three stopped short at the sight. Kuwabara dropped the gems, sending them clattering to the floor.

Red vines seemed to originate from a single red rose between Kurama and Hiei's bodies. The group gasped at finding Hiei here, not because he was here, but because he was dead. The vines grew darker as they spread away from the lovers, and the light from the sun illuminated the chamber as the last of the torches went out.

Moving forward towards Hiei, they saw that Kurama's name had been cut into his chest, identical to Kurama's chest with 'Hiei' carved into it. They walked to the sides of the coffin, carefully, to avoid slipping on the gems of stepping on the glass on the floor. The effect of the glass and the tear gems made the vineswept floor look like it was encrusted with a thousand diamonds and rubies. They sparkled beautifully in the light, accentingthe beauty of the demon's bodies lying side by side. In the sparkling gloom, all three could hear the last remaining echoes of Hiei's first—and last—words since Kurama's death.

'_I long to be like you _

_Lie cold in the ground like you_

_There's room inside for two _

_And I'm not grieving for you_

_I'm coming for you.'_

--- end3--- 


End file.
